Cher Msr. Thaler, cher Msr. Trinel

Your concept for the EcoVadis Premium Reports is excellent. There also is a chapter on “LABOR PRACTICES & HUMAN RIGHTS (LAB)”. In the chapter, employees of companies assessed by EcoVadis could find several pages on policies, actions and results.

Regrettably, some companies disclose their reports to customers only, but not to their employees. They trust their customers more than their own employees.

As long as an organization assessed by EcoVadis refuses to disclose their EcoVadis Premium Report at least to the own employees, these employees have to assume that there is something wrong in what their employer reported to EcoVadis.

In Germany, works councils are legally obliged to supervise the implementation of OH&S regulations and environment protection regulations in their organization. Therefore hiding any reports describing
• the state of OH&S and
• the state of environmental protection
from employee representatives is an infringement of their rights and interfers with the works council’s obligatory tasks. In order to obtain the report, works councils would have to sue the employer. But often works councils are to weak to do that. Here support from EcoVadis would help to settle conflicts out of court.

According to EcoVadis, “trade unions” already are legitimate stakeholders. Please describe the process which trade unions can use in order to obtain EcoVadis Premium Reports from those companies in which these trade unions represent employees. Understandibly, employees as stakeholders are curious about the chapter on “LABOR PRACTICES & HUMAN RIGHTS (LAB)”.

Please develop and publish an EcoVadis policy which shows that EcoVadis compassionately encourages assessed companies to disclose their EcoVadis Premium Reports to all parties who have a legitimate stake in the CSR of that company.